The RQ-170 Drone May Have Had All Its Data Onboard When It Crashed In Iran

Some new information has surfaced following the 10-week investigation into that RQ-170 Sentinel drone that went down in Iran back in December.Catherine Herridge at Fox reports that a former intelligence official says investigators believe “one of the drone’s three major “data streams” began sending back bad information to its U.S.-based operator.”

It’s still unknown if this bad data prompted the drone’s pilot to mistakenly land the aircraft within Iraq, but the bigger concern is the corrupt data stream may hev kept the UAV from doing as its supposed to and dumping its sensitive data.

The official told Fox that the CIA has been unable to reproduce the event that brought down the drone after its operators lost it over Iran on Nov. 29.

The official was very clear it was a U.S. mistake, not an Iranian attack that brought the Sentinel to the ground. “We have looked at this eight ways to Sunday. I can tell you it was a U.S. technical problem. The information (data) was not lining up and it was not the result of Iranian interference or jamming.”

While the onboard data is encrypted, it’s rife with information about hardware and materials.